361 - Donald E. Westlake [33]
Bill’s eyebrows came down. “Who does he say is your father?”
“If he’s smart, he’ll change his story.”
“I say it’s me,” said Kapp, “and it’s true.” He was mad at us.
Bill raised his shoulders and took a step and I tripped him. I said to Kapp, “He’s going to kill you now, I swear to God he is. And there isn’t a thing I can do about it.”
Bill was struggling to his feet, and Kapp backed away to the wall, talking fast, mad and scared both. “Your mother was a two-bit whore out of Staten Island, a goddamn rabbit. She sucked Will Kelly into marrying her, with the first kid. The second was mine. I know it, because she was at my cabin on Lake George for six months and she only went back to Kelly because I told her to.”
Bill was on his feet and I was hanging on his arm. Kapp spat words at us like darts. “Edith got exiled to a burg upstate with Will Kelly and orders to behave and never come back to the city. She couldn’t stand it. She was there a year and she stuck razor blades in her wrists.”
Bill threw me away, and I bounced off a tree-trunk. I shouted, “Tell him you’re lying, or you’re a dead man!”
Kapp flamed at me. His eyes were on fire. “And you’ll have another dead father to revenge, brat!”
Bill swung a fist like knotted wood. Kapp tried to lean inside it, but he was too slow. It caught him behind the ear and dropped him on his face in the weeds. Bill bent over, reaching to pick him up again.
I came up and clubbed Bill with the Luger. He went down on his knees. Kapp crawled away downslope, and Bill fell on his legs. I rolled him over, freeing Kapp’s legs, and Kapp crawled up a tree trunk to a standing position and stood hangdog, his arms around the thick trunk.
I stood in front of him, holding the Luger by the barrel. “Don’t stop talking,” I said.
“Not now, boy, I’m an old man.”
“Stop playing!”
He shivered, and leaned his forehead against the bark. His eyes were closed. “All right,” he said. “But give me a few seconds. Please.”
I gave him the seconds. When he raised his head, there were fine lines from the bark on his brow. He pushed his lips over in a weak smile. “You’ve got her looks, boy, but you’ve got my guts. I’m glad of that.” I didn’t say anything. He shrugged and let the smile fade out, and said, “All right. Her name was Edith Stanton. She came out of Rosebank on Staten Island in ’34. She went with Tom Gilley a while. He made her pregnant, but he aborted her with some right hands to the stomach. Then she floated around, here and there, with one or another of a bunch that mainly knew each other. This was still just after Repeal, and we were all trying to get organized again. She came across Will Kelly, and he fell for her. He was the only one’d ever held a door for her since Staten Island, and she liked it. Then she got pregnant again, by him this time, and suckered him into marriage. But she didn’t like staying home with the kid all the time, and she got to hanging around with the old bunch. Kelly stayed home and changed diapers. I think he’s waking up.”
I turned and looked. “We’ve still got a few minutes,” I said.
“All right. It’s like this, some women come to life with motherhood. I never paid much attention to Edith at all before, but when she started hanging around again she was different. No, she looked different. Tougher, maybe. More basic. I don’t know what it is, it happens to some women. I took her home. She was a rabbit, but there was something interesting in her besides that. I don’t know how to explain it.” He was getting nostalgic.
“I don’t even care,” I told him. “Get on with it.”
That brought him back. He said, “For a while, in ’38, there was some trouble. Baltimore was where heroin and that came into the country. There was a kind of dispute, Chicago and us, as to who was going to run Baltimore. So I went up to a private place on Lake George. I had two boys with me, two I could trust. And Edith. I told her come along and she came. We were there six months, and nobody touched her but me. She came back pregnant. She named the kid Raymond Peter Kelly. That was a private joke between her